Google: Please do something about updowner.com

I'm not clear on how Google's fancy new "Panda" setup doesn't see this site for what it is. Google has indexed 53 MILLION pages of autogenerated garbage from this crap website. Type site:updowner.com into google too see this.

Note the little scrolling divs where they copy pretty much the whole page of various websites, while optimizing the <title> <description>, etc tags to get free traffic from scraping and re-posting other people's content.

They show up in webmaster tools as backlinks, too, and they are just annoying garbage and driving me mad. I love how they show google;s blogspot.in as one of the fastest growing sites on the web. That's like saying facebook and twitter are popular. .lol

But seriously, I agree with you - they return like 53 million pages. Never see any traffic come through to my site with them as a referrer tho - and not sure who they are using for ads since the ads all talk or jump all over the place - don't look like googleads tho.

Checked out the FAQ page and they suggest blocking their bot if you don't want them crawling/indexing.

Norm, you need to read the Google General Rating guidelines ( for their human evaluators of potential alogrithm updates ). In the guidelines.....

( which by the way no of us are suppose to have a copy but like everything else.... stuff leaks out ........ so I am going to paraphrase )

Other spam pages which are semi-low quality and contain content that might be helpful to a visitor may be assigned a rating of semi-relevant

Some sites could be determined to be super important and still be assigned a spam tag because the site engages in some sort of extremely bad or offensive behavior.

(there, I don't think my paraphrasing is close to the original )

Bottom line:

1) a crappy site can still have value of some sort

2) Just because the site is in the index doesn't mean Google likes or doesn't like the site, Google indexes and shows everything (with criminal or malware infested exceptions) and lets the Google users ultimately determine the value of the site.

PS: I would hope that Google will stop showing the updowner backlinks in my WMT because in my opinion the site is crap.

Oh, and the guidelines you mentioned? I understand you feel like Google can do no wrong, but here's my rough summary of how that works.

1. The raters surf a representative group of sites, and rate them using the guidelines.h

2. Google then runs a machine learning algorithm on the ratings, and maps "characteristics" of the rated websites against them.

3. Google then makes the big leap that "sites with characteristics like the ones rated low" must be "bad".

Underneath all that, the algorithm is probably making some good decisions, and some bad ones. As one example, there's a particular e-commerce platform that happens to have some "bad" people using it, as well as some "good" users. Panda has apparently decided that any site that has the "signature" of this underlying platform, regardless of the actual content, must be smack-worthy. Many babies get thrown out with the bathwater as it were. ( Yes, I'm aware many factors are in the algorithm, but the case cited is real...many, many decent sites got smacked merely for using this platform )

Constrast that updowner.com, that appears to be hand-coded, and therefore isn't emitting any obvious on-page signals that are offensive to Panda.

And, ignoring Panda for a minute, they are unabashedly copying content from HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF SITES, and outranking the source site in many cases. I've reported them as spam, as have many others, and yet they continue to grow in terms of indexed pages and organic traffic from Google.

What about any of this points at Google NOT liking updowner.com? They LOVE it.

I said roughly "Google is sending them organic traffic", and you think I meant something different.

"Sending organic traffic", in this case, means that Google is buying into their automated content farm scheme. Updowner.com ranks well in Google for a ton of low search volume long-tail/multi-work phrases BECAUSE google has allowed 53+M pages of their B.S. to be indexed.

None of these phrases by themselves get searched for much, but when Google loves you enough to index just about anything you publish, it adds up to big traffic.

> Updowner.com ranks well in Google for a ton of low search volume long-tail/multi-work phrases BECAUSE google has allowed 53+M pages of their B.S. to be indexed.

Actually they don't rank well.

I have a low volume website specializing in the sales of long tail products. Some pages..... 100 hits/month ...... 150 queries/month if one is to believe WMT. Long tail, very few competitors. And updowner is nowhere to be found...... oh, maybe over on page 5...... not very beneficial.

Searching for myself on Google (because I know all the pages exist on updowner ), updowner shows up on the top of page 4...... again, not very beneficial..... especially since myname search is a navigational search and the 1st results are the appropriate response for the query and will account for 99% of all hits.

Updowner is trash. It (and sites like it) don't belong in the index. I don't want Google to show me any backlinks from Updowner in my WMT. But there is no way that Updowner is stealing much traffic from me or sales away from me.

Hi. I have had notification from Google today in Webmasters tools of unnatural links detected to my website. And yes they are coming from updowner. They are saying that my site does not meet their quality guidelines so I am assuming that I will be blocked at some point. At the time of this post my site is still indexed in Goole but I am concerned that they may block it in light of this message. Has anyone found a way to get these links removed yet?

I have now 9000+ backlinks from updowner but no messages about unnatural links.

There is a new player though this week http://en.mapatlas .org/s/about with over 900 backlinks in a week to my site. The mapatlas site appears to be using google maps and google images many pages, and is simply covered in adsense ads.

On some pages where there are actual words the grammar is poor. No contact info, no privacy policy.

On one page they 'thank' google for assistance in setting up site. Have to wonder that google NEEDS their assistance to showcase its google earth and google map data .

Looks like another MFA but why they need to backlink to me I don't know unless images on certain pages are google maps or my images in google search .

Does anyone at Google ever read these complaints? This is ridiculous that sites like this are getting indexed while google is shouting all over the place that they care about quality and relevancy of content.

Yes, The Internets are full of crap like this in their tubes and Google is a rat.

If Google likes websites like this, I could feed it with a thousand of such UpDowners for Free! But I do love my Internets clean and therefore I will never do anything like that, and therefore this is why I'm asking - hello, anyone at Google... ? please kill this site.. :)

Yes they do, but sometimes, the sites don't show up for queries anyway, so who cares? the site is a nuisance, but if it never shows up over your own site then who cares? I doubt very much Google is giving people the penalty over a scraper site of backlinks.

If it was your site that was crap, you'd be the first one here to complain that your site isn't indexed and it was unfair.

Lysis: You seem like a smart guy, but your knowledge of how Google operates seems either outdated, or unduly influenced by your apparent belief that Google can do no wrong..

1) Google regularly de-indexes sites, especially those that are trying to autogenerate pages for the purposes of garnering traffic. Why they won't deindex this site is a mystery to me.

2) While google isn't giving updowner.com any traffic from "popular" keywords, it's giving them a crapload of traffic from longtail searches as well as "mywebsite.com" searches. It's basically SEO arbitrage. You can do your own research, but here's a two example phrases:

vladimir tolkachov ( page 1, spot 10 )

newsrescue saro wiwa ( page 1, spot 5)

Granted, the terms they rank for aren't high volume, but when you have 50+M indexed pages, the "long tail" adds up.

3) Updowner.com, aside from autogenerating garbage pages, is also stealing content from legit sites, and putting it into tiny scrollable divs. This is creating two problems:

a) Unusually high incoming link velocity for the sites who's content was scraped, sometimes resulting in the dreaded "Un-natural links" message in GWT for the website owner.

I'm not Dr. Pete (from the SEOMoz Article), but I do manage a very large portfolio of sites, both my own, as well as a number of clients. I do respect Dr Pete, and value his opinions.

And, I'll be honest. I have a large number of very high quality, popular sites, as well as some lower quality sites. To date, Google's recent changes have actually given more benefit to the lower quality sites in my portfolio. This is a pretty large sample set, more than 1000 sites. Personally, I think Panda was a good idea that just fails in real life due to variables and factors that it doesn't know about. Search results post-Panda are less relevant than they were before. This new "anti-webmaster / anti-SEO" movement in Google isn't going to get them the results they want either.

Facebook and Apple are eventually going to eat Google's lunch, especially with all of Google's focus now going towards trying to make Google+ a facebook alternative. Ask anyone under 21, that's not a "techie" what Google+ is. You'll get a blank stare. Then watch them use the web. Even though Facebook's search is lame, they use it before using Google.

It's not anti-webmaster, not even anti-SEO. It's anti-spam. Anti-garbage. Anti-fraud. Ideally at least.

The fact remains that a very large percentage of SEO practitioners are engaging in spammy tactics. Those are dangerous.

Of what's left a very large percentage are still not truthful as to what they can possibly achieve even while unable to achieve much of anything.

I would consider an ethical SEO's duty to first advise and educate their client. If the client's content is hopeless crap they should plain refuse to do anything with it unless and until the client is willing to provide proper content for a proper website or give up. The SEO should point out that whoever undertook to build the site for such content should have been strung and quartered.

I'll grant you that perhaps it was intended to be anti-spam. Do you honestly think the top SERP positions contain higher quality sites than they did prior to Panda? Personally, if it were a lawn, I'd say it used to be grass with weeds in some bad spots. Now it's a little less grass, a little more weeds, and a few pieces of dog crap to boot.

I'll pass on the "ethical SEO" bait. SEO is a business, not a religion. As much as it infuriates everyone, building links and content isn't illegal, or even, immoral. I find more potential for er, "slips of ethics", on those who decide what value links have than those that create them. This thread is a good example. Updowner.com only bothers people because Google assigned value to it. They can create crap all day long, and nobody would care, so long as search engines don't pump it full of artificial value.

The top results are probably the same post-panda as pre-panda. It's some of the sneakier ones that spammed their way up to page 2 or even page 1 that get the chop post-panda.

For most of my searches I still see the same trusted sites I expect to see. Obviously it depends on what you search for. I probably hardly search for spam infested stuff to start with. For instance I have no need to search for payday loans or gambling.

I cited the credit card page as an example of a page that consists mostly of content lifted from other sites. And, not the "teaser" portion of the content, the whole page, in a scrolling div. None of the pages or searches mentioned are my sites or my client's sites. And, google indexes it, happily.

This isn't about my sites, or my client's sites. I realize many people come here seeking relief for their sites. That's not what I'm here for.

I don't happen to have any payday loan sites or gambling sites either.

Search for "dishwasher reviews" to see a good example of post-panda garbage. Again, don't have a site in this niche...this is a query I tried when I was shopping for dishwashers. Or try "mortgage calculator", another recent search query I tried.

I sent a message to updowner via the contact form on their website asking them to take down the links to my site. They sent me a messag saying that all links have ben taken down. I have checked some samples from WMT and yes the links to my site have gone. I'll post any changes as and when, but hopefully that's that.

My name is Bart and I am member of Updowner.com Team.I wanted to share with you the latest changes on updowner.com. It shouldresolve some of yours doubtless and concerns.

We have noticed negative feedback regarding to some updowner.com features,especially when dealing with linking to your domains.

Just to ensure everyone that we always respect your decision to have or notyour site in our ranking. If you choose your site not to be accessible for updowner bot - pleaseblock our robot in your robots.txt file. If you want to remove site fromupdowner listings, you can get register and remove site by yourself oralternative just mail us. Your site will be removed ASAP. All you need todo that is described on http://www.updowner.com/faq#q7

We have also removed domain preview section from Updowner.com pages, butyou can still add your own description of your domain (HTML allowed) oredit some of its details, the same way as it was before the update.This should minimize the amount of links pointing to your domain, sohopefully you will not receive any notices in in your GWT any more.